Imagine a Fukushima event here

By DAVID AGNEW

December 21, 2012 - 2:00 AM

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission advised all Americans within 50 miles of Japan's nuclear disaster to evacuate. But here, it requires emergency planning within only 10 miles of ground zero. The NRC's "science," contradicted by common sense and the experience of Chernobyl and Fukushima, says that releases could be inhaled within 10 miles; beyond that airborne radioactive material would miraculously be deposited on the ground without anyone breathing it. If the wind were blowing from the west-southwest at 10 mph, people in Provincetown would have two hours to prepare.

Wooden buildings offer little shelter.

Regulators consider a severe accident at a nuclear reactor to be a low-probability, high-consequence event, but they underestimate both.

The NRC has estimated the risk of an "incident" at a Mark 1 reactor (the type used at both Fukushima and the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth) to be one in 10,000 years. Of the 33 Fukushima-style reactors ever built, four exploded catastrophically. Based on real-world experience, the math is simple: one catastrophe per eight such reactors. On average, the still-leaking Japanese reactors are four years newer than Pilgrim. The risk is high.

The chance of a tsunami hitting Plymouth is remote but not impossible.

Other causes of a loss-of-coolant-accident are less remote: equipment failure, hurricane, ice storm, tornado, human error or malfeasance. If Pilgrim were to suffer a core melt, parts of Cape Cod would likely be contaminated for many decades, thousands of residents could contract cancer, there would be birth defects, increased disease, and damage to the future genome. Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency director Kurt Schwartz said an accident would put Cape Codders in "no immediate danger," and he's right: The cancer spike would begin 20 years later.

Until a few months ago, no emergency officials on Cape Cod were aware of plans — on the books since 1999 — to close the Sagamore Bridge to westbound traffic. The NRC presumes that only 20 percent of people between 10 and 15 miles from a meltdown would attempt to evacuate, and beyond that no one would. Data from Three Mile Island and Fukushima show that this is absurd, but emergency management officials play along.

The Pilgrim emergency plans appear to be nothing more than paper from Entergy Corp. to meet a requirement for the NRC's rubber stamp.

Cape Downwinders calls upon the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency to honor its mandate to protect public health and safety by withdrawing support for any plans that cannot provide reasonable safety for residents of the commonwealth — even if they live on Cape Cod.

David Agnew of Harwich is a founder of Cape Downwinders, a group dedicated to protecting and informing residents downwind of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station on the dangers of nuclear energy.